


Castaway Getaway

by PeaceHeather



Series: Marvel 'verse [7]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Also: Fuck Asgard, Banishment, Castaways, Fuck Asgard, Gen, Letting go and growing up, Loki Does What He Wants, Loki Redemption, Or At Least I Tried, Stone Age tech, Stranded, Sympathetic Odin, TONY AND LOKI DO WHAT THEY WANT, TOTALLY GEN NOTHING TO SEE HERE, Tony Does What He Wants, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, You can read pre-slash into it if you want, actually gen, survivalist - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 02:10:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6066694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeaceHeather/pseuds/PeaceHeather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Odin banishes Loki to a remote wilderness location with nothing but the clothes on his back, and one companion to keep him from going insane in solitude. Loki is pretty sure Odin expects him to suffer and grovel and repent of his evil ways. Unfortunately, Loki is not the groveling type.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bare essentials

**Author's Note:**

> Some friends and I were hanging out in chat one night and talking about [this series of videos](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA) by Primitive Technology, particularly [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P73REgj-3UE), and we got the idea somehow that if Loki were ever banished, stripped of his powers, he'd totally manage to turn the experience into a lovely vacation, because screw Odin. A handful of us decided this was a fun prompt, and ran with it. Hopefully you'll see at least two other works with the same theme here before too much longer. (And yes, I'll absolutely link them here once they're up.)

"Loki." Odin and Frigga stood in the rebuilt observatory near the ruined end of the Bifrost, looking at him sadly, as if they had any right. Thor held the Tesseract vessel in one hand, and Loki's elbow in the other. Loki still wore chains and that damnable muzzle, or he would have sneered at them all.

Then Odin gestured, and the muzzle fell away, so he did.

"All-Father. Mother. Pleased to have your pet on a leash where he belongs?"

Frigga looked pained at that, and surprisingly so did Odin. Thor shook Loki, because of course being physically threatening solved all his problems, and Loki shook him off with a glare.

"We failed you, Loki," said Frigga. "We only wanted—"

"You wanted to lie, and you did," said Loki flatly. "The only failing was in my finding out the truth." And in living when he meant to die, but they did not need or deserve to know that.

"The only failing, as you put it, was that we did not see how arrogant both our sons had become," said Odin. "And how resentful and jealous of one another."

Loki laughed bitterly at that, a harsh sound like the call of a crow. "You imply _Thor_ was ever jealous of _me_. Resentful, certainly, that he had to be saddled with my company. But jealous?" He shook his head, grinning viciously. "I think not."

"Brother…"

"Be silent, you overbearing _oaf_ ," Loki hissed. "We are not brothers. We never were. Odin lied to you as well as to me. Did he not tell you, while I was gone? I am nothing more than a stolen _war-prize_ to him, one that has outlived its _usefulness_."

He turned the full force of his glare on the man he'd once called father, ignoring the part of him that still, quietly, _hurt_ and wanted to come home. "So what now, All-Father? A swift execution, here, where no one in Asgard will learn that I did not die as you'd hoped?"

"I never hoped for your death. You are my son."

"' _No, Loki_ ,'" Loki quoted, and watched the old man's face pale. " _Laufey's_ son. Left to _die_. Dropped into an abyss because I could never live up to Thor's golden greatness and I finally discovered _why_. _That_ is what I am; do not pretend otherwise."

"Loki, stop this," said Frigga. Pleaded, really, and that was the only reason that he obeyed her.

"You believe yourself to have been perpetually overlooked," said Odin. "You told Thor before your fall that you never wanted the throne. That you wished only to be seen as Thor's equal. Is this true?"

"Would you care if it was?" countered Loki.

Odin's expression hardened, and that quiet part of Loki that he'd gotten so good at ignoring felt a thrill of fear. "If it is equality you want, then equality you shall have," he said. "Thor was banished, stripped of his power, until he should become worthy again. You shall receive the same, in hopes that you will regain the same."

Loki scoffed. "I do not carry a magic hammer to measure whether or not I am sufficiently _humbled_ and willing to obey your whims once more," he said. "And if you think sending me to Midgard is a good idea, then I shall have to wonder whether your wits are failing you in your old age."

"No," said Odin. "Not Midgard."

"We will watch over you, my son," said Frigga. "We will know when it is time for you to return."

Loki bared his teeth in rage. "You presume you have any right to sit in judgment over _me,_ to set your arbitrary standards by which I shall always be measured and _never_ shall measure _up_. Does Odin try to convince you that I shall one day be worthy to return here? He lies, as he has always lied. And you lie to yourself, as I suspect you have always done, if you take his words at face value. This supposed banishment is merely a convenient way for him to toss me aside, while he avoids dirtying his hands with my blood."

"Enough, Loki," said Odin tiredly. "It is my hope—"

" _Spare_ me your hope," Loki cut him off, his lip curling in disgust.

Odin merely sighed. "You will return, one day," he said, and then waved his hand.

"Brother—" "Farewell, my son—"

The words echoed strangely, as the world twisted and grew dim, and once again, Loki felt himself falling into nothingness.

Terror would have made him scream, but spite made him clench his mouth shut, until Loki knew no more.

* * *

"Okay, so, Janie, you're saying that you can predict gravitational anomalies that confirm both Einstein and Hawking's theories, and can pinpoint their location?" Tony was sitting on a work table, munching an apple with his feet rolling a computer chair back and forth.

"More than that," came the reply, "and it's Dr. Foster to you."

"Seriously? That makes you sound so old."

"No, it makes me sound like I actually have the degree I worked my ass off to earn," said Jane, and Tony could actually see the fire starting to light in her eyes. He liked her already.

"Okay, fine, Doc then. But come on. You were saying."

"I was saying I am this close to being able to _create_ the anomalies myself, small-scale, and with your tech and computing power I should be able to finally reach that milestone. Right now, I'm…" She paused, and sighed, then blew a bit of hair out of her face. "I'm working with shoestrings and packing tape," she admitted with a grimace. "My machine still runs on Windows 97 for God's sake. All these grant institutions think I'm crazy, but I'm not asking for much. If I just had—"

"No, I get it, you're looking to bring your tech up to speed to match your theories, and if you had that and could do what you're saying, then all these bureaucrats behind the grants would be jizzing their jeans—"

"Ew, there's a lovely image—"

"—and you'd have a Nobel with your name on it," finished Tony. Which was, really, the point, even if Janie—Foster—didn't think it was. There was a reason he liked being independently wealthy so much, and it had everything to do with being able to make what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted it.

"I, well, I mean, that would be _nice,_ certainly, but it's not really—"

Just like he thought she'd say. "Yeah, whatever, it totally is, but forget that. The point is, yes, and Pepper should be here any minute now with your move-in package and the keys to your lab."

"My—wait, what?"

"Yeah, I looked over this proposal of yours last night. Or was it this morning? Jarvis, if it was 4am but I've slept since then, does it count as yesterday or today?"

"It was eight hours ago, sir, but the date remains the same."

"You're—oh, my god, you're really?"

"Yeah, your intern started helping us pack up your stuff as soon as you got on the plane to make your pitch. Should be set up by this evening, although, Windows 97? We don't get our parts from Radio Shack, honey-yyy, _Doc_. I meant Doc. Don't sue me for harassment before you've even seen your space, okay? My point, you're going to end up throwing out or rebuilding a lot of your stuff. Or even more to the point, _I'm_ going to end up rebuilding it, or you can tell Jarvis and he'll be able to build to spec if your specs are clear enough. We'll have you opening mini-wormholes inside of two weeks."

"Oh my god." Foster looked like she might be getting a little lightheaded, so Tony reached over for the celebratory bottle of champagne he'd been planning to hand her anyway, and helpfully popped the cork on it for her.

* * *

Of course, two weeks later, it all went to hell—because she _did_ open a mini-wormhole, and Tony _was_ there to see it, and against every possible measurement, it grew to something larger than "mini", sucked him in, and flung him only god knew where.

He saw blue sky, and tall grass, and just had time to think _oh good, not hard vacuum_ before he landed and everything went black.

* * *

"Ow. Fuck. _Ow._ Son of a… ow."

Tony lay on his back in soft, tall grass, curling his legs up and trying to catch the breath that had been knocked out of him by his landing. He didn't think he'd broken anything, but _fuck_ his lungs were burning as they tried to refill.

How he didn't fall from that into a panic attack, he'd never know. Maybe the cheerful blue sky overhead was keeping him from going back to the Cave. Or the Void. He didn't really care as long as he could breathe again.

Tony sat up eventually, struggling to get his bearings. There was just enough of a throb along the side of his head to tell him to take it easy standing, but he managed not to fall over on his ass, nor to get too dizzy when he turned in a slow circle, trying to find anything recognizable about wherever the hell he was.

Nada. Hip-high grass, waving in a gentle breeze. Come to think of it, the air smelled almost impossibly clean and fresh. But that was it, in every direction. If Tony squinted he could make out what might be a green blur _way_ off in the distance to the… okay, assuming he was in the Northern Hemisphere, then the green was possibly to the northwest vaguely.

Was he in the Northern Hemisphere? He reached into his back pocket and slipped out the phone he kept there. Fortunately, the screen hadn't cracked upon his collision with the ground; unfortunately, he couldn't get a signal. GPS wouldn't come online, either, which for a Stark phone was… impossible.

Looking up, Tony spotted a divot in the grass that he'd overlooked before, a little bigger than the one right behind him from his landing. With a little frown, he stepped closer to it and looked down.

And promptly jumped backward, and oh look, there came the heart-pounding sensation of an impending panic attack after all.

_Loki._

What the hell was _he_ doing here?

Actually…

Tony stepped forward again, moving as quietly as it was possible to move in hip-high grass. Loki was still there, splayed out on his back, unmoving, eyes closed, arms flung up around his head, hands loose and open. A moment's examination showed the steady rise and fall of his chest, which was… yeah, Tony had no plans to get any closer and check his pulse or anything, but it was probably good that he wasn't a corpse. Maybe.

So… what _was_ he doing here? It had been several months since the whole New York thing. Thor had taken him home and no one had heard from any extraterrestrials since.

Then Tony thought of his phone, and wondered. Never mind the Northern Hemisphere… was he even on Earth?

After a moment's thought, he discarded the question as irrelevant. Tony had been stuck in the middle of nowhere before. An absence of torture and sand were pluses, in his book. He could handle this.

As for Loki? Well, forget him, Tony thought. Just looking at the unconscious alien was bringing back nightmarish memories that he'd prefer to keep suppressed just now, and Tony had no interest in getting into a fight with the guy without his armor. The green blur probably meant trees and might mean civilization. At the very least it would mean shade and a better chance of water.

He set off walking, trying to ignore the itch in his shoulder blades at the thought of what he was leaving behind him. It pissed him off no end when he realized that he was looking over his shoulder every few steps to make sure he wasn't being followed.

So _of course_ when Loki actually did wake up, he nearly gave Tony a heart attack, because _of course_ Tony wasn't looking when Loki leaped to his feet with a scream.

"Christ!"

He spun around at the same time Loki did, and they faced one another with wide eyes. Loki made an odd sideways gesture with one hand, closing his fist around nothing… and then he looked down at his hand, frowning, and did it again.

Nothing happened.

Loki swallowed, and tried whatever he was trying one more time, but still, his fist closed on empty air.

"Performance issues again?" Tony couldn't help but ask, and his mouth was going to be the death of him someday but the joke was _right there_ , so how could he not say it?

Loki drew himself up, some thirty paces off in the grass. "How came you here?"

And, damn. Tony hadn't realized he'd actually been hoping for the skinny bastard to know something about that. "Experiment gone wrong," he called back. "You?"

Loki sneered, and didn't answer.

"Nice face. Your mother ever warn you it'll freeze that way if you keep doing that?"

"Be silent, Stark."

"Come on, I thought you picked Barton's brain and knew all about me," said Tony. "I don't shut up on command."

"And I do not answer inane questions."

"Okay, here's a less inane one, then, smart guy—where the hell are we?"

Loki pressed his lips together, and turned in a slow circle. Tony let him get the same view of absolutely nothing that he'd gotten, then blinked when the guy snapped a few heads off the weeds growing around him and crushed them, rolling them between his palms and then bringing them up to his face for a long slow sniff.

"Alfheim," said Loki finally, in a tone of disgust. "He _would_ choose Alfheim."

"And for those of us who've never been on another planet before?" Loki appeared to ignore him, tossing the crushed bit of plant matter away and dusting his hands off on his pants. "What's Alfheim like, who would choose it, and choose it for what?"

Loki began walking toward him, and Tony did his best not to tense up, but he found himself sliding into a martial arts stance before he could stop himself.

"The man who pretends to be my father has decided on a punishment for me," he said, still sounding disgusted. "He wishes me to believe I can be _redeemed_ here, after whiling away sufficient time and becoming sufficiently repentant. I know better."

"How's that?" asked Tony reluctantly. Hey, if the man was talking he was probably not throwing anyone out any windows, or whatever the grassland equivalent was.

Loki paused before answering. "Odin All-Father does not keep what he has no _use_ for."

"Harsh." He tensed a little further as Loki waded closer, but the other man had chosen an angle of approach that kept them both out of each other's reach. "But he kept you this long. I mean, it's been months since the thing with New York."

Loki froze, at that, and turned slowly around to face Tony. "Months?"

"Uh, yeah. About five of them. Does your calendar even measure months on Planet Viking, or is it something diff—"

"I was in Asgard barely a few minutes," said Loki. "Thor and I arrived, Odin pronounced his judgment, and then I was sent here."

Tony blinked. "We were working with wormholes, trying to open stable ones. But we were practicing with miniature ones, micro-wormholes really, nothing a person could fit through, only the thing expanded and then I fell in."

He could have sworn he saw Loki shudder at the description, but his face remained stuck in the same annoyed sneer he'd been wearing. "And what were the odds of such a mishap occurring?" he asked.

"Uh. None? Factoring in power usage, we shouldn't have been able to get a wormhole large enough to transport a person without draining the power grid for the entire Eastern Seaboard. We were trying to confirm a theory, not put it to use."

Loki rolled his eyes in a truly epic display of disdain. "And a temporal distortion besides. Wonderful."

"What is?"

"The likely odds are that someone meddled with your experiment, in order to bring you here. Which means you are meant to _keep me company_."

Tony could feel his eyebrows going up. "Excuse me."

"I am as thrilled as you are, I am sure," said Loki, and began walking again. Away from Tony, so that after a moment's gaping, he struggled to catch up.

"Are you _serious_?" Tony demanded. "You get sent into timeout after killing however many hundred human beings, and I get roped in to, what, babysit you? Be your little _playmate_?"

"Thor violated a treaty that had stood for a thousand years, traveled to a forbidden realm spoiling for a fight, and when one of them called him a little princess, he slaughtered over one hundred before he was stopped."

"We weren't talking about Thor, damn it—"

" _In response,_ " Loki raised his voice until Tony quieted, "Odin banished Thor to a backwater planet without his powers, until he should learn humility rather than continue as a spoiled, vain warmonger. He suffered for _three whole days_ , succored by beautiful women who fed and sheltered him and aided him in his stupid schemes, and rescued him when those schemes failed. Poor thing. But then he nearly died and would have rendered moot Odin's attempt to bring him to heel, and so Odin restored his powers and brought him home."

"And this relates to you—us—how?"

"I have been banished to the middle of nowhere, but I suppose I cannot learn to abase myself before Odin's greatness without someone to keep me company. Apparently, his preference is for a _mortal_ to teach me the error of my ways."

Tony wondered if he was supposed to just not notice the part where Loki carefully didn't say he'd been stripped of his powers, too. That explained the weird hand gesture, probably. Performance issues, indeed. Still, Tony decided he wanted to go on living for a little while longer, so he kept his mouth shut on that score.

"You don't plan to play along, do you?" he asked.

"I do not."

"Gonna kill me?"

Loki eyed him sideways. "You are here through no fault of your own, and despite what you may think you know of me, I am no murderer, Tony Stark."

"And also, you'd have no one to talk to and you'd go nuts inside of three days," Tony pointed out.

It looked like the man was beginning to smile against his will, before he got himself back under control. "You cannot kill me," he said; "I intend no insult, but even without his powers, Thor was formidably strong compared to your kind, and you are without your weapons. So. You cannot kill me. I have no intention of killing you. This almost seems like the beginnings of a truce."

"Yeah, almost." He refused to admit that he needed Loki around if he wanted to survive on a planet where he knew literally nothing about the environment, languages, people, food, anything.

Except, of course, "You require my knowledge for survival," said Loki. Damn. "And I require your company, for the same reason."

Well, that part was a surprise. "Do you?"

"I have had enough of enforced solitude to last me a very long time," said Loki quietly. "I will reassure you that I am not the madman I presented myself as, on your world, but I do not pretend I am precisely _stable_ , either. Madness is not a fate to which I desire to consign myself."

"Sounds like there's a story there."

Loki stalked a few more paces in silence. "I suppose if we are trapped here long enough, I may one day tell it to you."

"So what do I need to know about this part of the world?" asked Tony. He resolutely refused to let himself huff and puff while he talked.

"Alfheim is somewhat like your own world," Loki replied, "in that there is great climatic and environmental variation. If I do not mistake my guess, we are on the Tandoor Prairie."

"Inhabited?"

"Not as such. The people who dwell here are nomadic, and at this time of year will not be anywhere nearby."

"So your dad dumped you literally in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but the clothes on your back and me?"

"Perhaps he was hoping that by the time the elves returned to this part of the prairie, I would be so desperate for companionship that I would do anything to keep it." Loki sneered. "Alternately, he knew I had friends on this world and wanted to keep me from them."

"Hard to imagine you with friends," mused Tony. Loki glared, and Tony reminded him, "Hundreds of people are dead on my world."

"Yet thousands, hundreds of thousands, die every day."

"Generally not from someone invading—"

"Oh please," Loki laughed. "Your _faction_ , your _America_ , may not be subject to invasion, but the rest of the planet faces considerably more violence on a daily basis, I assure you."

Tony sighed. He couldn't really argue that, except: "Not from another planet, though."

It was Loki's turn to sigh, which again, kinda surprised Tony. "No, I suppose not."

They trudged along in silence for perhaps half a mile; Tony couldn't be sure, but he thought Loki might be adjusting his steps to accommodate Tony's shorter stride. Which was… oddly generous for a former would-be dictator.

"If I decided I didn't want to be your playmate, would your dad send me back?"

"Unlikely," said Loki. "Our technology for such things remains broken. I will be stuck here until either the Bifrost is repaired or your people find a way to locate you, craft a stable wormhole of their own, and come to rescue you. Most likely Odin took advantage of your own technology and altered it to accommodate you. I have my doubts he will repeat the effort to bring anyone else to us from your world."

"That sucks."

"Indeed."

"Okay, but this still doesn't make sense to me. He throws you out with literally nothing, and lands you in the middle of nothing, and you're supposed to, what? Survive? Hang in there until Daddy decides you're sorry enough—"

"—desperate enough—"

"—to bring home?"

"Essentially."

"No food or water?"

Loki shrugged. "There is both food and water here in plenty. We will simply have to acquire it. And shelter, as you may have guessed, is going to be something we create rather than merely locate."

"…Your dad—"

"Stop." Loki held up a hand and turned to him. "The man calls himself my father, and Thor still acknowledges him as such, but I refuse to do so. I would appreciate it if you would make the distinction as well."

Tony shrugged. No skin off his nose. "But he wants to… he wants to bring you low, doesn't he? Scrambling for food and water, no companionship, no shelter, no civilization? He thinks you need humbling, so he's going to strip everything from you and do everything short of torture to remind you that you have nothing without him, isn't he?"

"That is likely not how he interprets it, but then he never sees the fault in his own behaviors that I have ever been able to determine. He raised Thor to be bloodthirsty and arrogant, then punished him for it, while taking none of the blame for himself."

"What did he raise you to be?"

Loki's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps I will tell you that someday as well," he said evenly, "but today is not that day."

* * *

They walked for another four hours before Tony gave up. "I have to stop," he said. So much for not huffing and puffing while he spoke.

"Are you injured?" Loki looked him over with a mild frown, but nothing more. Like he really couldn't…

"I'm _human_ ," Tony panted. "We don't last as long as space Vikings." He bent over and rested his hands on his knees, willing his heart to stop racing.

"And this frailty is normal for your kind?" Loki seemed honestly bewildered. "Agent Barton said your heart took an injury."

"Yeah, you want us to continue this truce thing, don't bring up Agent Barton," said Tony. He dropped to sit in the grass, uncaring of the way Loki loomed over him. "Just give me about a half hour to rest, and I'll be good to go some more."

"…Have you eaten? As we walked."

Tony squinted up at him. "Eaten what?"

In response, Loki reached out and snapped a few heads off the grass stems around him, and passed them down to Tony. "The red ones are edible this time of year. The others do not ripen for some time." He picked a few more and demonstrated, pulling the seed heads apart and popping the inner bits into his mouth.

Tony could only hope that what was edible to Loki would be edible to a human. "Down the hatch," he muttered, and gave them a try. The little seed heads tasted kind of like sunflower seeds, only maybe a touch sweeter. "Huh."

"If I were to starve to death before I learned my lesson, the All-Father would be _disappointed_ ," said Loki with a smirk.

"And we can't have that."

Loki's smirk grew a little wider.

"You said you don't plan to play along with his plan," said Tony. "How do you figure?"

"It's quite simple," said Loki with a little shrug. "He wants me desperate and repentant. I refuse to be either, for him."

"You're going to turn this banishment thing into a great time, out of spite."

Now Loki's smirk blossomed into a full-on, mischievous grin, and damn if it wasn't difficult for Tony to resist smiling back. It was the kind of grin that invited you to _come play,_ and Loki's next words did not help: "You seem one of the few people who might be able to understand the healing power of spite, Tony Stark." He glanced down to Tony's chest and back up, a little pointedly. "Or of turning your circumstances to your advantage, regardless of the wishes of your oppressors."

And yeah, this situation was already way better than a cave in the desert, but it was still meant to be a cage for Loki… and yeah, Tony could see it, Loki _would_ be the sort of asshole, like Tony, to turn a cage into a penthouse and say fuck you to everyone who had tried to lock him in.

 After about twenty more minutes, Tony climbed to his feet. "I'm guessing those are trees, way the hell over there, that we've been heading toward?" he asked.

"Indeed. Setting a fire here on the prairie is tremendously dangerous, and burnable material is scarce in any case. Once we are into the forest a little way, we will have many more resources at our disposal. Are you ready to continue?"

"Yup." He squinted ahead a little ways. "Think we'll make it by nightfall?"

"We shall see. In a way, I hope not, at least for this first night. We will be able to survive one night on the plains, and the sky is quite spectacular."

Tony stumbled a step without meaning to. "Lots of stars?"

"Indeed."

"Not for me," said Tony. "Not anymore." He'd managed not to have any panic attacks in front of Loki so far, and he was by god going to keep that trend going for as long as he could help it.

Loki frowned at him for a moment before his expression cleared in realization. "You have seen the Void," he said. Quiet, solemn. "As I have."

"You brought your army through it," said Tony.

"No," said Loki. "They dwell there. I fell in."

* * *

So it was a silent agreement between them that kept them going till sunset, and even a little past it, to make it into the woods. Tony was tired from the walk, though having a steady supply of snacks helped, but the shakes and the sweats were all down to the immensity of the sky overhead, growing darker and larger as the sun sank down in the sky. When they finally stepped under the canopy of trees, dark as it was, Tony couldn't help the sigh of relief.

To his surprise, he heard an almost identical sigh from the alien walking beside him.

"Are you well, Stark?"

"Thought I'd ask you the same thing," said Tony.

"I have endured worse." He sighed again, more heavily. "I hear water nearby, but would prefer to search for it in the morning. For tonight, will you be able to sleep in a tree, or must we cobble together some other shelter?"

"What are the odds of my falling out of these trees?"

"The main idea is to keep you off the cold ground for the evening," said Loki. "You needn't go very high. There are no large predators in the area. Snakes might be attracted to your body heat, I suppose."

"Poisonous?"

"They won't be looking to eat you, only shelter under your warmth," said Loki. "A bite would be in self-defense."

"You would like snakes, wouldn't you."

"I tend to appreciate creatures who are reviled for no reason," Loki replied, ambling up to a nearby tree. "They are merely following their nature." He hoisted himself up into a low fork and straddled the limb, leaning back against the trunk. "Do you require assistance?"

"Why are you being this nice?" Tony almost thought Loki could see his narrowed eyes, even in the deepening twilight.

"It is to my benefit to treat you well," said Loki, and while Tony's night sight wasn't that great, he could hear the tone of resignation in the other guy's voice. It almost made him feel sorry for being suspicious, but, well, New York. "Get some rest, Stark," said Loki. "Tomorrow we begin."

* * *

"Okay, we've found water," Tony said the next morning, "but I can't sleep in that tree a second night."

"Is this another aspect of your species?" Loki wanted to know.

"That and my age. Damn. I might have been able to do that when I was twenty. Or a lot drunker than I am nowadays."

Loki looked at him again, with the faintly bewildered, partially disgusted expression on his face. "How old are you, then?"

Tony splashed through the water a few steps until he found what he was looking for. "I'm pushing fifty," he grunted, picking up a large stone. "This has a decent edge on it already, plus I think it's granite. Think it'll work?"

"Granite is better than I'd hoped for," said Loki. "Until we can craft better it should do admirably. Also, when I was nearly fifty I had learned to lace my own boots and could write my name. How you people accomplish anything in the brief time you are given is beyond me."

"We mostly try not to waste any time," said Tony. His lip quirked as he admitted, "Some of us are better at it than others. It helps if you're a genius, you can accomplish more in less time and still be able to screw around."

"You are talking of yourself."

"Yep." He pitched another rock onto the bank. "So where did you learn all this survival stuff anyway, space Viking?"

Loki raised an eyebrow at him, and Tony resolved to use that nickname more often. "As much as I would prefer to use my magic for all of this, I was an apprentice once. On Alfheim, as it happens. I suspect Odin must have forgotten that, or he'd have sent me somewhere less hospitable."

"What does being an apprentice have to do with anything?"

"Young students often try to treat their magic as a solution to all problems. One way to get them to see otherwise is to force them not to use their magic for anything, for as long a period as necessary until the lesson sinks in. As it happened, I was not merely gifted with seidr, I was insatiably curious at that age. When presented with the opportunity to learn a new way to do things, I took it. I quite enjoyed the lessons, in fact."

"Plus, lemme guess, you and Thor and the rest of your people are the type to go out trophy hunting and live off the land in manly-man fashion." Tony sloshed his way back up onto the shore, a couple of smaller stones in his hands.

He was surprised to hear an actual chuckle out of Loki, who was bent over collecting the heavier rocks that Tony had found. "I cannot deny that building a shelter for myself while making Thor and the others sleep on the bare ground was highly entertaining." He stood, carrying maybe a hundred pounds of rock on one shoulder like it was nothing. "What of you? Humans are primitive, but even I know that most of your world has technology beyond this."

"You're too kind." Tony shook the worst of the water out of his Keds and started walking back to camp. "I'm an engineer, first and foremost. This? It's primitive engineering but it's still engineering; the laws of physics still apply. Material properties, tensile strength, leverage, friction, heat transfer. I'd give a lot for a laser cutter or even a carbon steel blade, but if I have to make do with a sharp rock?" He looked over his shoulder at Loki, eyes narrowed and expression heavy with memories of the Cave. "I'll make do with a sharp rock."

* * *

The two of them actually made a decent team; they took turns chopping wood, basically pounding at saplings with the sharp chunk of granite until the tree broke, and they had something to use as a handle and turn it into an axe. Loki gathered enough seed for them both to eat for the day while Tony made fire (and resisted imitating Tom Hanks in that one movie). Loki showed him what vines to collect for fiber and cording, while he went back to the prairie for grasses to use for bedding and roofing material. They had a thatched dome shelter built by the end of the day. It looked like a haystack but it was dry inside, warm at night, and a hell of a lot softer than the trunk of a tree to lie on.

"I'd be happier if I knew the water was safe to drink," said Tony. "I know you said it wasn't polluted, but. Fish and duck shit. Leeches. Single-cell organisms."

Loki snickered for a moment, but had the decency to sober up and answer him respectfully. "We have fire. We'll need clay from the riverbank and perhaps a day to craft pots. They'll need to be dried before they can be fired, or they will explode in the kiln. But after that, we will be able to boil water for everyday use."

"Clay, huh?" Tony leaned back and started thinking about what he could remember of ceramics properties.

"What is it?"

"Hm?" Loki was looking at him like he'd asked the question several times. "Oh. Just. You really want to stick it to your old man?"

Loki tilted his head, clearly intrigued. "You know I do."

Tony began to smile.


	2. From Surviving to Thriving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki and Tony settle in, Stone Age style, until disaster threatens to sweep away everything Loki has gained.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be the part where all those YouTube videos I've been watching make themselves known. Sorry. I'm a geek.
> 
> Also, if you ship FrostIron, even though this story is gen, if you squint I'm sure you'll be able to see something you like in this chapter.

It took them a week to build a wattle-and-daub hut with a thatched roof. They built a timber frame, lashed together with vine, then split saplings into bendable canes and wove them into the frame. Loki had the height advantage, so once the wall lattices were built, he moved the thatching from their dome over onto the roof of the new hut, while Tony filled the walls in with sandy, gritty mud.

They lived in that while they built the timber frame for a second hut, and crafted a tiny woodshed with a shelf to protect tinder and kindling from the rains that Loki said would be upon them soon. They also built a reasonable kiln out of mud and stones, and on the shelf of the woodshed, Tony began to stack flat tiles made from clay from the riverbank, all of them a uniform size thanks to being rolled out inside a rectangle of split cane.

Every twenty tiles, they loaded up the kiln and fired a batch. There were a few that broke during firing, but Loki refused to throw them out: "Everything can be reused for something," he said. "Just as we are reusing the ash in the latrine, and to keep your wet clay tiles from sticking to the stone."

When they weren't firing the clay tiles, Loki built pots and fired those, and soon they had jars to carry water from the river. They boiled it by dropping hot rocks from the fire into the pots. Before long, they'd designated one pot for dropping roots and seeds into as well, making a thin but tasty stew.

Their tool supply expanded. From sharpened rocks, they graduated to adzes, axes, and chisels, as well as a hatchet for the firewood. Tony experimented and got reasonably skilled at chipping away at flint to develop a sharp edge, and before long they had several knives; Loki split a few long, straight branches and seated knife blades into them to make short throwing spears, and they celebrated with fresh meat from the prairie. Tony was also the one to craft a pump drill for making fire, and a second one with a sharpened bit for boring holes into their timber frames for more effective joints.

Loki did not allow Tony to take all the glory, however; he was more skilled with working the fibrous vines without snapping them, and managed to craft not only a hunting sling but a fishing net and several baskets. They celebrated the net with a feast of fish from the river.

They were eating pretty well in general, really; Loki knew what was edible and what wasn't, and Tony was a fast learner, and before the first week they had started enjoying roasted and baked root vegetables, early berries, and edible flowers. The seed heads they'd eaten on the first day turned out to make a passable bread, if they were dried and ground to paste, then grilled on a flat rock over the fire.

The rainy season came, but the thatch roof held up just fine; Tony moved his clay tile production indoors except for the firing, and didn't even need to slow down.

Finally the day came when they had enough tiles. They went to their empty timber frame and laid them out, one by one, along the roof beams, listening to the rain tink and plink on the new shingles as they settled into place. Tony had crafted a double row of bent shingles to lay across the top of the roof, and with Loki's help they carefully shuffled each one into place.

After only a couple of hours, they stood there grinning at one another under a roof that would last for decades, if need be.

"Not bad," said Tony. "We can start on the walls tomorrow, and I have a plan for a chimney so we can get an actual stove in here, plus heated flooring. I think I've got something that'll do for windows, too, but we'll need more animal skins and a bigger woodshed to stretch them out in."

"I admit I am impressed," said Loki. "I would have thought to make clay pots, but not to do this."

"You're the one who said you planned not to suffer while you were stuck here," said Tony.

"You are providing better assistance in that aim than I would have originally believed possible," replied Loki.

"Eh. Engineer," said Tony with a shrug. "If there's a way to make it bigger, smaller, better, stronger, we'll do it."

They dug a trench into the floor of the hut and covered it over with flat stones, then sealed them in place with mud. Lighting a fire at one end of the trench heated the entire thing, giving them a warm, dry floor even when the rains made everything damp. The walls were mud, several inches thick, on a stone foundation, and reinforced with stones that ended up completely covered over by the mud itself. It was Loki's idea to incorporate shelves into one corner, reinforced by the walls on each side, and the next day when everything was dry, Loki and Tony filled them with their jars, baskets, and precious tools. It was Tony's idea to incorporate the beds into the walls as well, so that they were up off the floor and able to keep that much warmer at night.

* * *

A few days passed before they both began to grow restless.

"The house is great, don't get me wrong," said Tony.

"I understand you completely," said Loki. "We have been well occupied with simply establishing ourselves with the bare necessities and essentials. Now that we have achieved some level of comfort, we are uncertain what to do with our extra time."

So they expanded the woodshed, and spent a day collecting enough wood that they should be set for a few months if the weather were to change. They explored the river and found softer stones that were easy to grind and shape, and improved their axes and hatchet.

They accidentally discovered that a specific type of nut was oily enough to burn brightly for hours, and Loki was quick to build tiny clay pots to use as oil lamps with the nuts as fuel.

Tony was anxious to know how long they had already spent here, so they cleared space on the prairie and stuck a post into the ground for a solar calendar. They estimated thirty or forty days so far, carved notches into the post, and every morning and evening went out to set stones at the edge of the post's shadow to track the passing of the seasons.

Rain from the roof fell into another trench leading away from the hut, and they lined its banks with vegetables.

Loki grew bored with merely gardening and fishing every day, and carved a tafl board into the floor of their hut, fired clay game pieces, and taught Tony how to play. In exchange, Tony built game pieces of his own, and taught Loki chess.

They made clay skillets and spoons and bowls to go along with their jars and cook pots, and celebrated with pan-fried fish and roasted vegetables instead of yet another soup.

The weather turned cold; they piled the hut with grasses for insulation and bedding, collected or chopped as much wood as they could find, and taught themselves to weave. Loki remembered his mother's loom, and collected the timber for a frame, and fired a few dozen clay weights. There was a species of vine that was fibrous enough, all they had to do was let it rot in the damp for two or three days and it would split into hundreds of threads for their use.

Tony wove a stiff mesh out of thin, weedy vine, and figured out how to make rough paper from the shredded grass.

Loki discovered which plants carried dye to make ink, and how to cut reeds into pens.

Tony spent the winter explaining science, principles of mathematics, and the laws of physics; in exchange Loki attempted to explain the basics of magical theory. They started looking for ways to merge the two disciplines.

In the springtime, Loki stumbled across a nest of prairie birds whose eggs had not yet hatched, and instead of taking them for food, he watched them every day. When they hatched, he gathered the chicks and brought them back to their camp.

"Pets?" asked Tony, one eyebrow raised.

"Eggs. Quills. Meat without hunting," said Loki.

They put the chicks in the wattle-and daub hut that evening, and in the morning they all came peeping out to follow Loki wherever he went. The look on his face when Tony called him "mommy" had Tony laughing until he was hoarse and could hardly stand up. Still, the chicks cheerfully ate the slugs and insects that wanted to devour their little garden, and their bird poop had some kind of miracle fertilizer in it given the way the garden suddenly exploded with new growth, so it was a decent trade-off for Loki no longer being able to hunt for a while.

Tony worked through the chemistry and made a few rough guesses, and turned ash from the fire and animal fat from their kills into soap on his second try. They celebrated that with a large pot of hot water to wash with, and a second to rinse with.

"Now if I could just get a blade sharp enough to shave all this, I'd be set," said Tony, scratching at his chin. "Must be nice never having to deal with that yourself."

Loki went quiet at that, and Tony wondered if he'd touched another nerve. The calendar said they had lived together for seven-and-a-half months now. It was the longest continuous relationship Tony had ever had with anyone, and the two of them certainly felt to him like they'd turned into an old married couple. (Sure, he'd known Pepper and Rhodey for longer, but they'd never lived together quite like this.) The winter, with the two of them cooped up together, had not been without its share of arguments and shouting matches; still, they'd gotten to know one another quite well. Loki had witnessed Tony's panic attacks and talked him through them. Tony had helped settle Loki after his own nightmares, and learned about their source. They had talked, _really_ talked; both of them had started off with lies and careful dissembling, they had hidden parts of themselves behind wit or charm or insults, and eventually they both had decided that the charade was too much work to keep up.

Not even Pepper knew some of what Loki now knew, about Tony. Tony suspected that there were things he knew about Loki that no one else did, either.

"It was considered effeminate, on Asgard," said Loki after a moment. He sighed. "Another sign that I was not and never would be able to fit their ideal of… manliness. Worthiness."

"Well, you know I've said it before…"

"Fuck Asgard," they said together, and Loki chuckled. "Would that it were so easy."

"It is," said Tony. "Odin wants you _attached_ , to him, to the idea of going home, to whatever. You've already made up your mind about him; now you just need to let go of the rest of it. Of their ideals, of _their_ notions that claim _you're_ not good enough. Why should you measure yourself to their standards? You're the Asgardian equivalent of Tony Fucking Stark," said Tony, sticking out his chest a little to see Loki smile. "Plus you're the earth equivalent of fresh outta college and ready for your Eurotrash backpacking trip to find yourself. Hell, this _is_ your Eurotrash backpacking trip to find yourself. In fact… huh."

"What is it?"

"Huh."

"Tony."

He shook himself with a little blink. "It just occurred to me that maybe Odin _doesn't_ want you so attached. Maybe that's been your problem all this time, trying to live up to rules that don't apply to you, and he's actually smart enough to see that, so he's _giving_ you a Eurotrash backpacking trip to find yourself. I mean, according to the Buddhists, even hate and rejection are still attachment. You've got plenty of that, but you're still not free of them and their bullshit."

"And you are here because you are meant to teach me the wisdom in, as you say on Midgard, 'having zero fucks to give'," said Loki thoughtfully. The precise way he said it made Tony laugh. "Hm. It is a more generous view than I am inclined to ascribe to Odin All-Father, yet there is some merit to it, I think. I shall have to contemplate it for a time, I believe, before I can really say whether I agree or disagree with the premise."

* * *

A couple of days later, while they were mending a tear in one of the fishing nets and bantering back and forth over whether or not to simply make a new one, Loki looked up at Tony with a suddenly solemn expression on his face. "I begin to think you may be right," he said.

"Babe, I'm always right," said Tony, "but what am I right about this time?"

Loki tossed some dried leaves into Tony's hair. "Your comment the other day. That perhaps Odin was truly wise enough to see that attempting to be what I thought he wanted was killing me. It… I would like to think of Odin as the father who cared for me enough to see that. There is just enough rebellion in me that I would also like to think he does not want a repentant child to return to the fold and become the dutiful son, trapped in Thor's shadow as I have always been."

"He maybe wants you to grow up and cares enough to want you to be your own person, rather than an extension of him?" Or another Thor, thought Tony, but he wasn't sure Loki was ready to hear that yet.

"Yes," mused Loki. "But how do I trust that this is why he sent me here? How do I avoid wasting my time following a false lead?"

Tony shrugged. "You don't, I guess. I mean, there's no way of knowing. You'll either figure it out and he'll bring us home, or you won't and he won't."

Loki scowled a little, twisting a bit of cord into place before he spoke again. "Or he has no intention of returning me to Asgard, ever, and there is no point to any of this. In which case, I was right all along, and his only plan was to cast me aside in a fashion that left me helpless to _fight back_ against his judgment." The cord snapped in his fingers. "Damn."

"I dunno," said Tony. "I mean, I'd say not being wrapped up in rage all the time would be a benefit whether it was what Odin was after or not. And no offense, but as far as throwing you away goes, I only have your word to go on about whether or not he's really that sadistic."

"The father I believed in was not," said Loki, "but I realize now that I idolized him. He _had_ no flaws, and his every decision was perfect and wise. How do I know whether I was wrong about this, too?"

Tony shrugged again. "You don't."

"You're not helping."

"Sorry."

"I simply… I do not understand how you mortals are able to let go, to live free of the expectations of others, and to do it in the brief time you are given. I was _once_ named a god of deceit, untrustworthy, and that is all anyone has seen when they look at me for decades. _Centuries_. If Odin truly wishes me to _let go_ of Asgard, of those oppressive assumptions about who I am supposed to be, then how do I do it?" He tilted his head a little. "How do your people?"

"Well, to be fair, most of us never do," said Tony. "But a lot of us don't mind living up to the expectations that were set for us. Some people are trapped living _down_ to the expectations set for them, that they'll never be enough, that they're a member of some class or group that is just destined never to succeed. Or that they deserve the shit that happens to them. You know."

"But some of you do succeed in breaking those chains," said Loki. "I would know how."

Tony sat back on his heels, chewing on a hangnail while he thought. "It's hard to describe," he said finally. "I mean… how do you let go of something that's heavy and dragging you under? You just… you just do. You let go of it. And then you can swim and you can breathe again, and you wonder why you ever held onto the thing for so long."

"You speak as one who has let go of such a burden," said Loki.

"Well. I've told you about Obie." He hadn't had much choice, waking from a thrashing nightmare that had tumbled him completely from his bed one night. Loki had pressed him for _days_ until the full story came out, and then returned the favor by telling him all about his experiences at the hands of someone named Thanos.

"You cannot pretend that letting go of him was easy," insisted Loki, his voice dripping skepticism.

Tony sighed. "No. No, there are times when I still try to pick him back up. But if I want to go on living, and not despise myself, then I have to be proud of dropping him and everything he stood for. I'm Iron Man _because_ I refused to do what people expected of me anymore—including lay down and die because Obie decided I was _in the way_. You stalled Thanos and got _two_ of these gem things away from him, because you refused to play by his rules. This… this is like that. You'd be playing by your own rules. You're just declaring that you'll only keep those parts of Asgard that are of value to you, and you'll refuse to let the rest of it dictate your own judgment to you of who you ought to be."

Loki nodded thoughtfully, and didn't answer, and eventually the talk turned to other things.

* * *

The time passed, from spring to a hot and dry summer, more quickly than Loki would have expected to be possible. Perhaps that was a factor of having been made mortal, so that he felt time moving more swiftly now. Or perhaps it was simply that his days were full and he could not distract himself with the pursuits he would have enjoyed on Asgard.

Studying magic, for one. It was a source of endless frustration that he could not reach his magic past the barricade that Odin had placed. The All-Father could not strip his powers the way he had Thor's, not without killing Loki, but apparently he could seal the magic away under Loki's skin, where Loki could do nothing with it.

Well. Almost nothing. Loki had discovered one day while on the hunt that restricting the magic to only his body meant that he could still shape shift. It made hunting a bit easier, to be able to scent where his prey was hiding, and to chase it down in a faster form than the shape he usually wore. He hadn't told Tony about it, only implied that he knew this planet better and could hunt more effectively than would be possible for a human. It was perhaps the last secret between them. Thankfully, Tony hadn't minded, claiming that fishing was less work anyway, and that he wasn't exactly known for his strength or speed. (Loki disagreed with that; once they had started trusting one another more, they had taken up sparring for something to do, and Tony held his own quite well, for a human.)

Large game didn't really travel to this part of the plain, for some reason; Loki suspected Odin's hand in that as well. Granted, the two castaways would never be able to finish off a large carcass before it began to rot and attract scavengers, but where the game went, the elves would follow, and Loki had seen no sign of them in the almost-year that he and Tony had lived here. The chance to speak with someone else was beginning to gnaw at Loki. The chance to trade for a few items, like blankets, or even just to share stories and companionship, would have been very welcome.

Not that Tony was poor company; not at all. He was, if Loki were to allow himself to admit it, someone Loki would consider a close friend, and he often found himself wishing that they had met under other circumstances. Certainly, the mortal claimed to understand Loki's motives and the game he had been trying to play with the failed invasion, but even so, Loki suspected that a degree of suspicion toward him would always linger. How could it not?

He shifted into the form of a hunting cat, relishing the feel of the magic whispering under his skin, and took a moment to scent the wind. A hint of smoke intrigued him; could it be that the elves would come nearer this season? Then he started forward, moving as smoothly through the grass as a fish through water.

There was no immediate scent of nearby game, but that was typical; Loki simply wandered further out onto the prairie, allowing his nose to guide him and his mind to sift through idle thoughts. The sun was hot, and the grass yellowed from lack of rain.

The ongoing discussion he and Tony were having kept pulling his attention, so Loki let it.

Was Odin truly trying to help him separate himself from Asgard, from Thor's shadow? Was that the lesson he was supposed to learn while stranded here?

If so… as much as Loki hated to admit it, it seemed to be working. Once the immediate pressure to survive had been eased, Loki had discovered that he _enjoyed_ life here. Even without his magic, or with this very limited form of it, living here was… well, peaceful, for one. But more than that, it was freeing. No one nagged at Loki to come and fight, or drink, or leave his books, or stop "scheming". If he wanted to sit all day and try to craft a musical instrument out of sinew and bone, there was no one to mock him for his interest in womanly things, or nag him that his work was a waste of time and effort. If he wanted to argue science and magic with Tony, there was quite literally no one else to come and interrupt them. If he wanted to spar, he sparred. If he did not wish to, he did not. If all he wanted to do was tend the garden and _think_ , then that was what he did.

Loki found himself not quite wanting to go back. Actually, no, that was an understatement—he found himself _very much_ not wanting to go back.

Still, assuming Odin really hadn't thrown him away, he would probably return to Asgard eventually. And then he would have to face all he had done. But that was not the notion that made him so reluctant. No, it was simply the weight of everyone else's expectations. They were exhausting, and he never succeeded in living up to them anyway—or else he was trapped living down to them, as Tony had put it. Even going to Jotunheim to make reparations of some sort had more appeal than going back to the golden Realm Eternal.

 _Ugh_ , he thought. _Fuck Asgard_. Then the amusement bubbled up in his chest, and if he'd had his usual shape he would have burst out laughing. He and Tony had rubbed off on one another in more ways than one.

He sobered suddenly, though, because the thought struck him like a spear; what if he really did just… let go? What if he could return to Asgard and _ignore_ their stupid assumptions and expectations? What if he could render the weight of their stares meaningless, the jabbering of rumor-mongers of no consequence?

What if he, for once in his life, said no to Thor instead of always following where he led? What if he were to say no to _all of them_ , instead of them always saying no to him?

 _No, Loki_. A shudder ran down his spine, and his claws flexed at the memory of their final conversation in the armory, when Odin could only say _stop_ , and _no_ , and the only time he said _yes_ was to confirm that Loki was Laufey's son by birth.

What if he were to say, "No, Odin"? And mean it. And stick to it.

Return to Asgard long enough to convince them he was redeemed, whatever that meant. Either regain his magic from Odin, or learn a way around his binding. And then… and then freedom.

Could it truly be possible?

According to Tony, it most certainly could.

* * *

The smell of smoke grew stronger, and Loki found himself turning toward it. If there were elves in the vicinity, they might not be happy to see a human on their world, but they had always welcomed Loki. He had an understanding with several of the shamans here, and had visited many times since his apprenticeship.

Then the smell grew stronger still, and Loki heard a roaring, rushing noise that chilled the blood in his veins. He shifted back to his Aesir shape and stood, trying to get a better view, praying he was wrong.

He wasn't wrong.

The first of the rodents came darting past his feet in a blind panic, as he stared down the wall of flame where the prairie should be.

Damn this summer drought!

Then another rodent ran right across his foot, and another handful came, and soon there was a flood of them, all fleeing the fire as fast as they could while Loki stood there and watched it come.

 _My home,_ he thought. _Tony._

Tony!

In a flash, Loki had shifted, not into his hunting cat form but into one of the antelope-like creatures that the elves preferred to hunt. Soon he was bounding away from the edge of the flame, faster than horse or hound could run, leaping over the grass with his ears laid back in fear.

As he approached the forest he could just make out the sight of the single column of smoke that marked their hearth fire, and he adjusted his course to meet it. But the fire behind him was a raging, living thing, and this form was meant for short sprints, not long runs; he was growing tired far more quickly than he ought.

A bird, then; first a magpie because he'd used the form so many times that it came naturally, then a hawk, climbing on powerful wings and beginning, barely, to outdistance the wall of fire behind him. He screamed, hoping the sound would travel far enough to catch Tony's attention, and beat his wings faster.

It seemed to take forever to reach the cover of the trees, which would be no safety at all once the fire reached them. Loki dove, screaming, as Tony looked up in startlement, and shifted back to his usual form just as he reached the ground. He stumbled and rolled, tumbling through the garden and demolishing a row of plants that would soon be ash anyway.

"Loki?!" Tony was standing over him, eyes wide. "What the hell, man, I thought you didn't have any magic—"

"Fire," panted Loki, scrambling to his feet. "Fire, there's a, a prairie fire, we've got to get to the river—"

"Loki, what the hell is going on?"

"There's a _fire!"_ Loki grabbed Tony's shoulders and shook him. "It's a grass fire, the drought, everything is going up, can you not hear it?" He kept talking as Tony tilted his head, and then went pale in realization. "It'll be at the edge of the forest in less than a minute. We _have_ to get to the river, it's the only way we'll survive."

"The chickens—"

"I'll let them out, I can run faster than you, now go!"

Tony stopped only to grab their wood-and-stone tools and fishing net from the house, then ran. Loki started to gather the game birds that they were raising, but their instincts took over and they too began to flee. He pulled their pottery out of the house and set it in the woodshed; hopefully when it went up, the collapse wouldn't shatter everything. If the roof of their house caved in, any pottery left inside would be destroyed.

He found Tony safe by their favorite fishing hole; they had carved enough clay from the banks to create a little hollow, and the spring floods had scooped away at the riverbed there so that the water was deeper. It was a perfect shelter, and Loki did not hesitate, jumping into the water up to his thighs and taking the tools from Tony. Not long after, he was helping Tony slide down the bank and into the water beside him.

"How long do we have?" asked Tony.

"I don't know." Loki was still catching his breath from his dash across the prairie. "Once the fire reaches the forest, it may stop, or slow, but I think it will still send the trees up in smoke. I think we have a little time but I don't know."

"Do we have time to talk about how you lied to me?"

And there was the thread of suspicion. Loki looked down at his friend, knowing that the fire would cost him this, too. "I never lied—"

"Bullshit. You said you didn't have any magic."

"I didn't. I thought I didn't. Odin locked it away. I can't do anything with it."

"Except turn into animals, apparently." Tony still looked angry, but his eyes were searching Loki's expression intently.

Loki refused to look away. "If Odin had tried to _take_ my magic, I would have died. Painfully. So he locked it under my skin instead. I thought I had no access to it at all. I never lied to you about that. I discovered otherwise completely by accident."

"If the magic is under your skin it can still affect your skin?"

"Yes. Precisely. But I can do literally nothing else. None of the seidr can leave my body. Shape shifting is all I have."

"That's why you're the one who goes hunting," said Tony.

"In other forms, I can smell the game. Or outrun it," Loki confessed. This would be the moment where Tony accused him of lying, of still having more magic than he was admitting to, maybe even blamed him for the prairie fire. Whatever reason Loki would supposedly have to do such a thing, he couldn't guess, but rationality had never stopped the Aesir from slinging accusations before.

"Can you turn into a fish?" Tony asked.

Loki was so thrown by the question that he actually forgot about the fire for a moment. "Can I what?"

"Can you turn into a fish," Tony repeated. "You could get out of here, get to safety. Not have to worry about smoke inhalation."

Loki blinked in surprise; no, in shock. "You would have me abandon you?" he demanded, reaching out to take Tony's shoulders again. "You would have me run like a coward?"

"Who the hell said anything about cowardice? It's a damn forest fire, Lokes, not a… dragon or whatever the hell you guys always go off and fight!" Tony threw his hands up in a familiar gesture of exasperation, except that this time he also spattered Loki's face with water. "It's a force of nature; you don't fight those, you get the hell out of Dodge and come back when it's safe!"

"But you would still have me leave you," said Loki, shaking his head vehemently. He shook Tony, gently, as burning leaves began to fall, hissing, into the water. "Hear me now, Tony Stark. You are my _friend_. And this is my _home_. And I will _not_ be parted from both of those on the same day. Do you understand me?"

It was Tony's turn to blink in surprise. "This is your home? What about Asgard?"

At that, the laugh that had welled up earlier, on the prairie, finally burst forth. " _Fuck_ Asgard. I don't even want to leave this place!"

"What about your magic?"

"I have enough. I want more, I want it all returned to me, yes, but if it meant having to put up with Asgard and all their—what is your mortal word, their _bullshit_ —then I would forsake it and keep what little I have. I am done with them. I no longer care what they want of me, I shall not give it to them. I am done being their entertainment and their scapegoat."

Tony grinned. "Good for you," he said. "Took you long enough."

The roar of the flames grew louder, and burning branches began to drop into the water around them. They ducked farther into the hollow under the bank. The air grew hot as the water grew warm, and the fire roared above them.

"Fuck," said Tony, wincing as he inhaled. His face was already starting to turn a painful-looking red from the heat. They had crouched down into the water as far as they could and still be able to breathe, but the air was growing too hot. Soon they would burn their lungs and die anyway. "You might want to see about turning into a fish pretty soon, Lokes." His voice was breathy, and a little hoarse.

"I will not leave you," said Loki. He ducked his head back underwater, but when he came up his hair began to dry almost immediately. "You told me your greatest fear was to die alone and unremarked. You shall not have that. I will not be the one to inflict it upon you."

"You just don't want to lose your tafl partner," said Tony, coughing a little but still smiling.

"Well I suppose there is that, too," said Loki. By the stars, the way this man could defy everything, all the way up to laughing in the face of death. "If there were a form I could shift to, to save us, or shift _you_ into, I would do it in—wait."

"What?" rasped Tony. "Wait what?"

In answer, Loki closed his eyes, and turned his focus inward, and _reached_. He had never taken this form before without assistance, but…

But oh, it felt like coming home. How could it ever have been difficult? How could he ever have imagined it to be so?

He reached further, and heard the creaking, snapping sound of ice forming in the water around him. He opened his eyes to see Tony staring at him, but there was no time for shame. He reached up, and cupped his hand over Tony's mouth and nose.

"Breathe in. Tell me if it's any better."

Tony inhaled, and on his exhale a wisp of fog escaped Loki's fingers. "Oh _god_ that's helping," said his friend. "I don't know what kinda shape shifty thing this is supposed to be, Blue Man, but it's _awesome_."

Loki laughed in relief, the air still too hot for his sensitive skin, but he reached inward and _pushed_ , and felt his temperature drop further. The air around him was turning all to fog now, mist rising from the water and frost beginning to form on the ends of Tony's wet hair. A thin crust of ice was forming next to Loki's skin, sticking to his clothes, and breaking off whenever he moved. "Tell me if it gets too cold."

"No, 's good," said Tony. "I don't know how long you can keep this up, though."

"Neither do I," said Loki. He moved closer, pulling Tony to his front and wrapping his arm around him. It was much more comfortable to keep his hand over Tony's face this way. "I've never taken this form before without help, but on the other hand it is supposed to be the form I was born in."

"Jotunheim, right?" Tony leaned tiredly back into Loki's embrace, and it was… strange, but good. "This is what your people look like?"

They were not precisely his people, but the middle of a forest fire was hardly a time to argue semantics, either. "They are generally several feet taller. I've never seen one with hair, but I suppose the warriors could shave their heads or something. Or perhaps I am a hybrid and that is why I was left to die. I'll never know."

"Mm. You could go to Jotunheim someday."

"I suppose that is true." Loki shook him a little. "Stay awake. If you succumb to some invisible gas after all the effort I've put in to keep you alive, I shall be cross with you."

Tony's chuckle made more ice break away from Loki's body and float off downstream. "Think it's just the adrenaline wearing off. We're probably not gonna die today. It's nice."

"Probably not, no."


	3. Home Sweet Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their time on Alfheim comes to an end. Loki's parents share their thoughts with both Loki and Tony, in their own ways.

They rested under the riverbank, listening to the roar of the flames around them. Loki mentally went through a checklist of their possessions, trying to think of how bad the damage was likely to be. Their home was probably destroyed, but they could rebuild. Food would be scarce for a while until the prairie grew back, but there should still be fish. Water they had in plenty, even during the drought. Most of their ceramic goods would have survived the fire intact.

"Hey Lokes," said Tony, his voice muffled under Loki's cooling hand. "What's that sound?"

Loki tilted his head to listen, trying to find what did not belong. Above the noise of the fire, there was a hissing sound, like water on hot stones.

Water on hot stones.

Loki leaned out from their shelter and looked downstream, and could see drops striking the river here and there.

"Rain."

Loki could hardly believe it, but as if to reassure him that he was not going mad, there was a crack of lightning overhead and a peal of thunder that rattled the ground. The rain increased until it was a steady downpour, and Tony began to laugh.

"Rain!" He whooped in excitement, then clutched at his chest with a wince and coughed harshly. "I can't believe it's actually raining."

Actually, he had a point. "The weather was too dry for this," said Loki. "There weren't any clouds to be seen while I was hunting."

"So what does that mean?" Water splashed quietly as Tony turned around to face him.

"Magic," said Loki. "Too far away for me to feel, but the elven shamans could have caused this."

"Yay team," huffed Tony with another cough. "Go elf shamans."

By now, the air was cool and the ground above them no longer hissing so much when the water struck it. Loki stood, using his greater height to survey the land between here and their home. Mist was rising from everything, likely still hot enough to scald. "We'll have to stay put for a little while yet," he warned Tony. "Everything is still too hot even though the flames are dying out."

"Yeah. Figured."

He sat back down in the water, and the two of them leaned back against the riverbank and just rested. The air was still warm, but the rain had brought the temperature down enough that it no longer scorched their skin to be in it, and Loki thought Tony was breathing a little more easily. "Are you all right?" he asked anyway, just to be sure.

"Dunno," was the reply, and Loki sat up, worried. "I mean, I can breathe, it just hurts. Do lungs heal? I'm sure lungs heal. It'll be okay."

Loki wasn't so sure.

The rain went on for what felt like hours, although Loki was sure it was probably less than that; he was anxious to get back to their home, and begin rebuilding. He was more anxious to shape shift and go looking for the elves, see if he could convince their healers to come and help Tony. Mortal or not, he'd more than earned his place here, and he was Loki's friend besides. Surely that would be enough for them to make him welcome—or at least grant him leniency for trespassing?

Finally, finally, the rain let up. Loki and Tony looked at one another wordlessly and stood, gathering up the tools they had brought to spare them from the fire. The stone axe heads had been enough to weigh down the wooden handles and keep everything underwater and safe, so they wouldn't have to hunt for new wood among the charred forest.

Loki helped Tony climb the bank, waiting and fretting when he paused to cough some more. Loki had done his best to help, and had probably saved his friend's life in the short-term, but it looked like his efforts might not have been enough to protect Tony long-term. He could be permanently damaged, for all Loki knew.

They were trudging back to their little clearing, mindful of still-hot patches of ground, when they heard voices.

Both of them stopped dead in their tracks, hardly able to believe what they were hearing. They'd had only one another to speak to for so long that the voice of a third, possibly fourth person, felt strange and… intrusive.

They couldn't go faster, either toward or away from the clearing; Tony's injury wouldn't permit it. Loki led him round to the side, putting a few larger trees in between them and whoever it was.

"Elves?" asked Tony, as quietly as he could.

Loki listened, very carefully. Contemplated shifting into another form to get closer, but decided against leaving Tony unprotected.

And then he recognized them.

"Thor. And Sif," he said. Why would they have come? Loki remembered what it had looked like when Thor's powers were restored to him. He was still without his magic. Had they intervened only to stop the forest fire?

He set their tools down beside a tree trunk and selected a chisel and three stone knives, just in case; then he put himself between Tony and Thor's party, and eased into the clearing.

"Should we call for him?" Sif was asking.

"Father insisted that Loki was well, that he'd survived," said Thor fretfully. He turned in a little circle. "But I do not see how. Have we come too late?"

"Too late for what?" asked Loki, stepping out from behind their house. The mud walls were intact, having only baked in the heat, and there did not appear to be any damage to the roof from falling limbs. That was good. The woodshed was destroyed, of course, and their garden was ash and possibly roasted roots by now.

"Brother!" Thor came bounding toward him, then stopped cold a few paces away. "Loki? It is you, isn't it?"

Loki raised an eyebrow, then remembered. He had not yet shifted back to his Aesir form. Thor was looking at perhaps the smallest Jotun he'd ever encountered, instead. "It is," was all he said.

"This is… did you regain your powers?"

"Why do you want to know?" asked Loki. He shifted, since Thor was looking so very distracted, and because he could not read the expression on Sif's face, which was never good. "Why have you come?"

"Father sent me to bring you home," said Thor.

"Why?" And what about Tony?

"He said you had fulfilled your sentence," said his brother.

"Did he actually say that?" pressed Loki. "Were those his words, or only what you inferred?"

Thor stopped, blinking. "He… his exact words were that you had learned much, and he believed it was time to restore you to your rightful place."

There was a tiny bit of Loki, still, that had ached to hear that and yearned to know what his rightful place would be. But the rest of him thought, calmly, _Fuck Asgard_. He said none of that, though, and only asked, "Did he tell you he abducted the mortal Tony Stark, and flung him here to keep me company?"

"The Man of Iron is here? His people tell me that he has been missing for a full month!"

"A month." That was Tony, coming up behind him, still rubbing his chest. "Does this look like a one-month beard to you, surfer dude?"

"Temporal distortions," said Loki. "Do you recall, you arrived here _before_ you left Midgard."

Thor and Sif both looked him up and down. "How long has it been for you?" asked Thor.

"Never mind that," said Sif. "Are you injured, either of you? The All-Father sent Thor to wield the storm as soon as he learned of the fire. Did we come in time?"

"Tony requires a healer," Loki said immediately. "Mortal he may be, but if he was good enough for the All-Father to steal him and put him to _use_ , then he is good enough to be permitted into Asgard."

"Of course," said Thor. "He is my friend as well."

 _No he isn't,_ thought Loki viciously; then he stamped the jealousy down. If he were to let go of Asgard, he could start with this. "If knowing you is what will see him to the healing wing," he said mildly, "then so be it." There was no room for envy here; he had his doubts that knowing Loki would be enough to grant Tony anything at all, anyway, but that wasn't the point.

"What about Loki?" asked Tony with a rasp. "He coming too?"

"The All-Father sent us for him," said Sif. As Tony doubled over coughing, she actually had the decency to look concerned. "We should return quickly, for the mortal's sake."

* * *

Loki kept his stone knives on him for the return to Asgard. They might not do much against Aesir steel, but they were better than nothing and he did not trust his status to protect him—did not know what his status was, really, and Thor didn't either no matter what he said.

Neither he nor Tony were in their original clothing from nearly a year prior. Tony's had worn out after near constant use, and after learning to weave they had been able to make crude tunics and trousers for themselves. They looked like rustic peasants compared to the glow of Asgard, but Loki did not care. "Fuck Asgard" had become his mantra, not just for personal growth but because it reminded him of his friend, who was even now in the healing wing under the supervision of Lady Eir herself.

"Loki." He turned, and there stood Frigga. "My son."

It was about deciding what you wanted to keep and what you didn't, Tony had said. Loki decided he very much wanted to keep Frigga. "Mother."

He allowed her to embrace him, but pulled away when she asked, "Will you not bathe, or change your clothing?"

"I will not be parted from Tony until he is recovered," he said.

"You care for him."

"He is my _friend_ ," said Loki, in a tone that clearly conveyed _What did you expect?_

"Peace, my son," she said. "It is good to see you care for another."

Loki frowned. "When have I ever _not cared_ for another?" he asked. "All I did before my fall was for Thor, and Odin, and the good of Asgard." All he had done afterward had been, too, but no one of Asgard had ever bothered to ask him about that before Odin had sent him to Alfheim to learn his lesson.

"Yes," said Frigga. "Misguided though your actions were, your motives were for others. For the most part. But what of yourself?"

"I do not know what you mean," said Loki.

"Have you learned to care for yourself, while you were away?" she asked gently.

Loki sighed. "Whatever interview Odin sent you here to conduct, he will have to perform himself," he said tiredly. "Whatever lesson he claims I need to have learned, I know not whether I have learned it. But I no longer care for his so-called redemption, and will not pretend or twist myself into a shape that is not purely myself, in an effort to please him, any longer." He said it calmly, without any of his former rage, but firmly.

"Good." Odin stepped through the doorway, a servant behind him bearing bundles of clothing in various colors. "Come here, my son."

Loki held back another sigh. If he were to claim Frigga, flaws and all, he ought to at least accept that his father had flaws of his own, and was only a man. And possibly even had had Loki's best interests at heart all along.

Odin beckoned again, so Loki stepped up to him, still in his homespun, hand-woven clothing, looking down at the face of the man who only wore gold.

"You are my son," said Odin. "I was not given the opportunity to tell you all that you needed to hear. But you are my son, and have been from the moment I chose you."

Loki swallowed, his eyes beginning to sting. "You told me 'no'. On the bridge."

"And I have never regretted any words I have ever uttered, as much as I regret those," said Odin. "I had just awoken, forcibly, from the Odinsleep. I could barely speak at all. What I wanted to tell you, my son, was that I never wanted any of this for you. That you never needed to do any of it, never had to prove yourself a loyal son. That you never had to measure up to Thor's standards, because I never wanted to have two _Thors_ in my family. I wanted a Thor, and I wanted a Loki. And I lost Loki, through my own failings as a father."

He reached up to caress Loki's cheek, and Loki could not stop the tear that spilled over. "It is my deepest hope," Odin went on, "that you were able to find Loki, while you were away. To rediscover who you were, without any shadows being cast upon you."

Then he stopped, and he waited for Loki to answer. Loki swallowed hard, twice, three times, before he could say, "I believe I have."

Odin nodded. "Good." And the hand on Loki's cheek grew warm, and he could see a glow out of the corner of his eye. The glow spread across his skin, and Loki felt something foreign snap inside him and vanish, and then his magic came rushing out in a green nimbus that filled half the room before Loki could regain control of it.

As he pulled the seidr back in, he thought briefly of changing his clothing to Asgard's fashion, leather and suede and velvet and gold; but then he thought of Tony, and let go. He gave himself better footwear, altered the fit of his homespun, and gave himself a green vest, but nothing else.

"And those?" he asked, nodding to the stack of folded clothing the servant still carried.

"For you, if you wished them," said Frigga. "Or for your mortal friend."

"His name is Tony Stark," said Loki formally. "On Midgard he is nearly a prince of their people, though they have no single ruler of the entire realm. He was… a worthy companion, in my stay on Alfheim. But tell me, All-Father: did you ask permission of him or his people before transporting him to my exile?"

"I attempted to," said Odin. "Whether or not they received the message, I could not say."

"Thor expressed surprise that he was with me," countered Loki. "He said the mortals believed him missing. You may owe him, _and_ his people, an apology."

Ah, there was the stubborn glint in Odin's eye that Loki was so familiar with. He'd begun to wonder if something drastic had happened to alter his views on the "lesser races".

"We shall see that he is compensated fairly," said Frigga, causing Odin to glare at her in exasperation. "Hush, husband. You know it is the right thing to do."

"He is mortal. Whatever gift we give him will be wasted in the blink of an eye."

"Not necessarily." Frigga smiled, that enigmatic smile that had always enchanted Loki as a child.

* * *

"I look damn good," said Tony. The rasp in his voice was completely gone, and Loki had yet to hear him cough even once.

"Is image so important to you?" asked Loki.

Tony sighed, still looking at himself in the mirror. "The world needs to see Tony Fucking Stark, and see that he not only wasn't kidnapped by terrorists this time, he's been on another damn planet making nice with actual aliens. Alien clothes? That works. And I'm keeping the long hair or else no one will believe I was gone for a lot longer than just a month."

"Yet I see you were quick to restore your facial hair to that ridiculous fashion you wore when we first met."

"The mountain man look is _not_ me," said Tony. "Plus it itched like hell."

"I shall have to take your word for it," smirked Loki. He had finally changed into something closer to Aesir fashion as well, enjoying the comfort of soft fabric against his skin and the rich colors he'd missed.

Tony, for his part, looked quite noble in leathers of dark brown and red, with gold trim in places that suggested Thor had given them a description of Stark's fantastic armor.

"I still say you should stop by and have that drink I owe you," said Tony.

"And I, as always, must reply that I've no desire to be pounded into the floor again, and that it would be best to wait until you have spoken to the others on my behalf."

"You know what that's gonna entail, right?" asked his friend.

"I do." Speaking, being disbelieved, examinations for mind control, patronizing condescension, pity, distrust, and eventual grudging acceptance. "And then I will appear and it will begin all over again."

"Yeah, well. Fuck 'em," said Tony, and Loki laughed.

"That mantra has served me surprisingly well, these past few days," he said.

"Good to hear, Lokes. Good to hear."

* * *

The expected hoops to jump through had been even more annoying than Tony had expected. It wasn't that they'd thrown any surprises at him; it was that there were too many people. He'd gotten used to the solitude, just him and Loki.

And he'd gotten used to _Loki,_ himself, as a companion. More than once, he had caught himself looking over his shoulder to share a glance or a laugh or just a comment with Lokes, only the guy wasn't there anymore.

From what Thor had said, he was taking care of some sort of restitution on Jotunheim, which, good for him, from Loki's story that was something that needed to happen.

About the only person who wasn't either suspicious of or worried about him to one degree or another was Jarvis. Because Jarvis was the best. Pepper fretted. Natasha pretended she was neither suspicious nor worried, but merely hanging around because she had nothing better to do. Tony rolled his eyes at her every time she came into the room. Clint was a little freaked out by their sparring sessions, because it turned out that working out against a god—even a slightly-diminished god like Loki had been—had still done wonders for his speed, plus he'd picked up moves that Clint wasn't prepared to counter.

Steve… wasn't actually around. He'd moved to Washington and had some sort of drama of his own going on, last Tony had heard. Probably for the best; Tony really didn't want to deal with the judgmental faces that the Man With a Plan could throw his way.

Sadly, neither was Bruce very much. He'd left immediately after Manhattan, no matter how much Tony had begged him to stay, and his whereabouts—well, SHIELD probably knew where he was, but Tony didn't. He would have been a lot mellower about everything than everyone else, Tony was sure.

Jane Foster had been horrified, and then when Tony explained that their experiment had been meddled with, she had been so royally pissed that Tony honestly wished _she_ would get invited to Asgard, and he could go along to hear her tear Odin a new one. That would have been glorious. She wasn't exactly thrilled with Thor, either, even though he hadn't known any of what was going on. Actually, Tony thought she was pissed at him _because_ he hadn't bothered to find out what was going on.

Days passed, turning into weeks, then months. Tony bought a house plant. It lived. He ate a lot of fish. He took vacation days at a cabin in Canada that he'd forgotten his family owned, and tried catching trout. That didn't actually work, and whose idea had it been to invent fly-fishing anyway?

He watched YouTube videos on Stone Age tech and survivalist stuff, and tried to figure out if he could work up a winch-and-pulley system using just the materials they'd had on Alfheim. Pepper tried to get him to stop, and he just let her talk. When she started mentioning getting him professional help, though, he put his foot down.

"Pep. You're the best, you know that. But this was a castaway situation, okay? Only we didn't just survive. We made it _work_. We turned it into one of the best vacations I've ever had, and _yes,_ I want to go back, okay? I want to go back because I don't have anyone there waiting for me to jump through their hoops and perform my tricks for them like some kind of genius _chimpanzee_. How is wanting _that_ so terrible that you think I need help coping, huh? Seriously, answer me how, because I'm not seeing it."

She didn't have an answer for him.

The one thing Alfheim didn't have was his lab, with the bots and Jarvis and all the fabrication technology he could lay his hands on. That was actually pretty glorious to come back to. He threw himself into work, cranking out one innovation after another, until finally even Fury shut up and climbed off his ass.

But Loki wasn't around, and somehow none of it was quite as satisfying without having his partner there to share it with.

* * *

A year went by, then a few more months; there was a terrorist, and an engineered virus, and Pepper almost dying but then not, and Tony getting his arc reactor taken out. And then, one day, Fury called.

"We picked up somebody wants to talk to you," he said. "Claims not to be a crazy dictator this time around."

"What have you done to him?" Tony demanded.

"Not a damn thing. Apparently he was _holding back_ last time he was in town. We can't touch him. But he's given us all kind of interesting intel _anyway,_ and I want you to come in and verify it if you can."

* * *

Tony showed up with a bottle of scotch and two glasses in a little briefcase, the liquor costing more than what Fury probably made in a year.

"Told you you should come get that drink," he said, playing it cool for the security cameras.

"I had a few errands to run, first," said Loki. He took a sip of the scotch and savored it properly, a contented sigh making its way through the room.

"So what's the sitch?"

"Oh, nothing too terrible, really," he said. "My mother sends a gift, for you, as thanks for your time and energies on my behalf on Alfheim." He made a smooth gesture with his hands, and a handsome wooden box appeared in front of him on the table.

Fury's voice came over the intercom. "We'll have one of our agents open that, if you don't mind."

"My present, my rules," said Tony, and flipped the lid open while Fury cussed in the background. He tipped the box over sideways, and a single apple rolled out.

"An apple?"

"The gesture is a symbolic one," said Loki, "from the queen to those whom she favors. It's rather like some of your world's monarchs, who go through a whole ceremony of tapping people on the shoulders with swords."

"Knighthood? I'm being _knighted_?"

Loki shrugged. "There isn't any exact equivalent on your world," he said. "It is a symbol of the queen's favor. You are welcome in Asgard, even though you are human, and you would be accorded certain honors and signs of respect if you were ever to visit. She charged me to bring this to you personally, and bear witness that you'd eaten it. There are further steps to the ceremony, of course, but this is your part, I suppose you could say."

Tony picked it up. "Uh, you know _I_ have no problem with this, but people outside this door are going to be flipping over whether it's some kind of poison apple, right?"

Loki sighed. "My apologies for the rudeness," he said; "Mother will be appalled at me for doing this." And he plucked the apple from Tony's hand and took a bite. Chewing, he handed it back to Tony, eyebrow raised.

So Tony took a bite, too. It tasted like apple, and sunlight, and the promise of a great day ahead. "You know," he said, totally talking with his mouth full, "we have myths about Viking gods and fancy apples."

Loki chuckled indulgently. "Yes, I've read them. But this apple hardly looks like it is made of gold, now does it?"

Actually, in the hollow of his hand where the fluorescent light wasn't hitting it, it kinda _did_. And the warmth and tingling sensation that was spreading from Tony's belly outward suggested that maybe this was no ordinary fruit, either. He looked Loki right in the eye, and took another bite. "Nah," he said.

Somehow, Loki managed to keep a straight face, but Tony knew him well enough to know it wasn't easy.

"Oh, hey, seedless. That's neat," he remarked idly, finishing the apple all the way down to the stem.

"If you would place the stem back into the box," said Loki, so Tony did. Loki closed the lid with a frankly silly degree of solemnity, and somehow Tony managed to keep a straight face too.

"So was that it?" Tony asked. "Fury suggested you had something else in mind when you showed up."

"Indeed," Loki replied with a nod. "I came offering reparations to your world for the damages from the gambit I played, when last I was here. As I understand it, SHIELD is debating whether or not to allow me anywhere near you, for fear that whatever 'compromised' you before could do so again. Alternately, they believe your Avengers might be best equipped to contain me, if my motives prove not to be as sincerely altruistic as I've claimed."

"Ah. So this," he gestured back and forth between them, "this little meeting is a test?"

"That would be my guess, yes," said Loki.

Tony rolled his eyes so hard they hurt. "Right. Well, I'm outie," he said, shoving his chair back and standing. "I've jumped through enough hoops for these assholes. You?"

"I was just thinking that I could use a brief vacation," he said, standing as well. "Are you able to get away for a while? Nothing too long; we wouldn't want to alarm your people."

Tony pulled out his cell phone. "Jarvis, get with Pepper and clear my schedule for the next week."

_"Of course, sir. Are you quite certain this is a wise course of action?"_

"It's one I'm kinda craving," he said calmly. "But I promise, I'll be back in seven days, and no temporal distortions this time." Loki nodded to confirm. "Water the plant for me, would you?"

_"As you wish, sir."_

Tony hung up, just as Fury's voice came over the intercom. "Stark, if you think you're going to just walk out of here with him, I'm afraid you'll have to think again."

"Fury," said Tony, "I'll remind you I'm an American citizen and not under arrest, and neither is he, and we can walk anywhere we damn well please."

"Besides," said Loki, "who said anything about walking?" And he held his hand out to Tony, who naturally took it, and the last thing he saw of that place was the door bursting open and Fury stalking through, before it all faded away.

* * *

"Oh, hey," said Tony. "Love what you've done with the place."

Loki tried not to preen, but the fact was, he was quite proud of the repairs and improvements he'd made to their home in the Alfheim woods. He'd even managed to keep to a minimum of seidr use, so that Tony could maintain it himself if he wanted. "Thank you," he said, stepping inside.

"So, golden apples are a thing," Tony said cautiously.

"They are," said Loki. "I thought you might wish a few days' solitude to adjust, and allow the changes to work through your system. We can tell people that you returned with me to Asgard to receive some sort of blessing from the queen and complete the ceremony."

Loki waited for him to object, or claim that he had been tricked, but, "Sounds good to me," was all Tony said. He looked at the little table and chairs that Loki had crafted, sitting over the spot on the floor where they had carved their game boards into the dirt. "So. Tafl?"

Loki took a deep, cleansing breath, and let it out in a long, relieved sigh. "My friend, I would like nothing better."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that if I were really trying to fit this story into the canon somewhere, Fury wouldn't be in charge. I think it'd be Maria Hill? But... hand-wave, hand-wave, nothing to see here, move along. :)
> 
> Thanks to all of you for your kind words and for following this story! If you want to leave extra kudos, you're welcome to stop by [my Tumblr blog](http://peaceheather.tumblr.com) and say hello.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Debts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8210623) by [d_aia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/d_aia/pseuds/d_aia)




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